Meet Mark

Let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Sisson. I’m 63 years young. I live and work in Malibu, California. In a past life I was a professional marathoner and triathlete. Now my life goal is to help 100 million people get healthy. I started this blog in 2006 to empower people to take full responsibility for their own health and enjoyment of life by investigating, discussing, and critically rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true about health and wellness...

In Defense of Meat Eaters, Part 2: Animal and Human Well-Being

Yesterday, I debunked a few of the common, “evolution-based” arguments leveled against meat-eaters that might have the potential to stump anyone with only cursory knowledge of evolutionary science. By and large, these are arguments that appeal to our emotions. They invoke a peaceful, gentle pre-history of slender, humane early humans co-existing in perfect meatless harmony with the animal kingdom, an image that sounds great and makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Those sharp spears found at various dig sites, you ask? Why, those were just used to skewer hard-to-reach apples, or perhaps to gently separate two squirrels battling over an acorn. But the fossil record shows distinct markings on large ruminant bones that seem to indicate cuts, tools, and butchering – how do you explain those? Oh, those? See, early humans were so grossed out by animal carcasses that they couldn’t bear to actually touch them with bare hands. They developed tools so that they could move the offending meat out of their line of sight without actually putting hands to flesh. Pretty ingenious!

Jokes aside, the reality is that life for Grok wasn’t a Disney movie. Lots of animals died to ensure our species’ survival. Lots of plants, too, plus innumerable other organisms, unicellular and multicellular alike. The cycle of life, you see, is also a cycle of death. Plants get eaten by animals, animals poop out the waste, and that waste gets consumed by the living soil, and the enriched soil makes it possible for more plant life to flourish. Similar cycles occur in every imaginable environment with different organisms, but the basic story is the same: the constant interplay between life and death.

Death, then, clearly has a place in our world. But that sounds cold and heartless (damn our evolved sense of sympathy and empathy!) to most people. “Death”? I mean, it’s death. It’s gotta be bad, right? In fact, one of the weirdest problems people have is that death is necessary for survival, even though the act of killing an animal for food is somewhat unpleasant. Omelets require broken eggs, but cracking that shell turns a person’s stomach. So when a vegetarian utters something like “Meat is murder,”I can almost understand, just as I can understand why people might think low-carb diets are dangerous – because Conventional Wisdom continuously, constantly promotes these viewpoints. All animals raised for food suffer needlessly and cruelly, and no one can stick to low-carb diets long term and if they do, they’ll get heart disease and die.Those are the talking points, anyway.

So, what do you say to an ardent anti-meatist whose evolutionary arguments have been rebuffed and who comes at you with concerns about animal cruelty and human health? Read on.

Meat is murder.

I went over this already in my review of Lierre Keith’s The Vegetarian Myth, but I’ll reiterate: life is death. Life springs from death, everywhere and always. You cannot live without something dying to make it all possible. Grain heavy vegan diets require the destruction of ecosystems and all their inhabitants; meat heavy Primal diets require the slaughter of a pig or a cow. If you’re going to exist in this world, you have to accept the fact that things will die. Oh, and things won’t just die; they’ll die to ensure your survival. You, me, all of us have blood on our hands. Your pets have blood on their paws. Those pigs rooting around in the dirt have blood on their hooves. When you have a knee-jerk reaction to the reality of death and try to escape it, either by eating a vegan diet or hurling insults at meat-eaters, you risk throwing off the delicate balance of life on this planet. When you remove death from the equation, life simply doesn’t work.

Now, there are right and wrong ways to produce meat. I won’t argue against that. In fact, I always maintain that the industrial CAFO system is unsustainable, produces unhealthy, unsuitable, antibiotic-laden meat with skewed O6/O3 ratios, and is damaging to the environment. Whereas a grass-fed, pastured farm produces healthy meat and usable manure that fertilizes the grass and helps replenish the soil, CAFOs produce mountains of sloppy manure (these animals aren’t eating their natural diet, so they poop endlessly). Whether we can support the entire world population on pastured animal products, I don’t know. I suspect not. There are better ways to farm, better ways to raise animals on their natural diets (moving animals off grains so that we can convert the croplands designated to feed them is a good start), but feeding six billion (and growing) is a tall order. The planet probably wasn’t meant to hold all of us. There are no easy answers to the environmental impact of meat, but they certainly don’t lie in the amber waves of grain and soybean farming.

Your average meat eater gets more diseases.

Superficially, this is the most effective rhetoric. It’s punchy and technically true, and it confirms most people’s suspicions of meat eaters. Meat is unhealthy; everyone knows it, right? Of course they get the most diseases, the most heart attacks, the most cancer. They can even cite mainstream studies that claim as much, studies that make the front page of every mainstream publication. The latest was the infamous red meat study that seemed to show the more a person consumed red meat, the greater their cancer, heart disease, and total mortality. It makes for a good headline, but it doesn’t mean much. For one thing, it shows correlation, not causation (establishing a causative mechanism would require controlled studies), and for another, it also showed similar connections between mortality and marriage status, smoking, high BMI, lower education, low physical activity levels, and low fruit and vegetable intake. How many of these meat eaters were also eating potatoes fried in rancid vegetable oil, swigging a jumbo Pepsi, and polishing off the meal with a bowl of ice cream? The stigma that meat is unhealthy is a potent, virulent one, and your average CAFO-meat-eating American is more likely to be the type that smokes, drinks heavily, never exercises, and lives in front of the television. If anything, these studies are strikes against the Standard American Diet and Lifestyle, which is technically omnivorous but completely and utterly different from the Primal Blueprint, which prides itself on promoting healthy, pastured, organic meat along with regular servings of fruits and vegetables, plus exercise of varying intensities. Throw a few modern Groks against your average vegan dieter (let alone someone following the SAD) and see how their health stacks up. We already know that the evil saturated fat found in animal products isn’t so evil after all, especially in the context of a low-carb Primal diet made of real foods.

We aren’t your average meat eaters.

Meat eaters don’t eat vegetables.

This one really riles me up. It operates under a totally false dichotomy: that meat eaters eat only meat. Just because a person eats a lot of meat doesn’t mean vegetation takes a backseat. I’d be willing to bet I eat more vegetables than most vegetarians out there, simply by making room and avoiding all those refined grains that form the basis for many vegetarian diets. You could conceivably remain a vegetarian and live off a diet of pancakes, fake meat, cereal, and pizza, while a plan as nutritionally-bereft as that one is impossible on a high-meat Primal diet.

And even if someone decided to go completely carnivore, so what? You can obtain all the essential nutrients that way, if you plan it well. I’d put a slab of organic, grass-fed beef liver, a heart steak, and a side of lamb brains up against a bowl of couscous and lima beans any day.

Between yesterday’s post and this one, see how long that took? It’s tough giving a quick two or three sentence rebuttal to a quip like that. You can’t link to posts or studies in real-time conversation. Try doing that the next time you find yourself accosted by vegans at a cocktail party. It probably won’t work on them, but you might convince a couple eavesdroppers.

To sum up

There’s a whole lot we don’t know, but what we do know is this: the human animal was designed to eat meat. It fuels our cells, our brains, and it builds our musculature. We designed tools to assist us in the procuring and processing of meat, and we still get that instinctual, savage urge to consume it. Meat tastes good. It provides essential nutrients and vitamins. And, contrary to popular belief, meat and meat alone is not responsible for cancer, heart disease, and a whole host of other ailments. Meat, when properly sourced, is a crucial element in the human diet. Despite the specious arguments about saturated fat and frugivores and chimps and murder, we know that meat is a good, healthy thing for the individual. And in the end, you’ve got to look out for your health and personal well-being. I refuse to sacrifice my health and happiness just so man can “evolve” past meat.

At least that’s my take on it.

What other arguments have you heard from anti-meatists? Let it all out in the comment boards.

Great posts on this topic, Mark! You covered a lot of potential vegetarian arguments. Luckily I live in Nebraska where I don’t have to defend my taste for a nice juicy steak too often. We definitely need to work on producing more grass-fed, free-range beef, though.

While I totally agree with the importance and value of meat/eggs and vegetables, minus all grains and added sugars…my question is what about arachidonic acid(AA)found mostly in meat and egg yolks? It has been demonized by many, Barry Sears, etc., as the cause of all inflammation in the body. Is that a concern for us on the PB plan?

Barry Sears is like Loren Cordain – right on some things, wrong on others, kind of kooky in general. This is one of those areas where (IMO) Sears is wrong, like the idea that we should eat 40% of our diet as carbohydrate and only 30% as fat. That’s getting into skinless chicken breasts and rice territory.

Arachidonic acid is essential for a lot of things, including inflammation, which is NOT always bad. Inflammation is involved in the body’s healing processes. It’s just when inflammation is chronic that it is bad, and as far as I can tell, the AA itself is not the instigator of chronic inflammation and there are generally more worthy suspects elsewhere.

Better to keep total PUFA intake low, and try for a decent omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, than to worry about arachidonic acid in particular.

Great way to sum up the problems with anti-meat theories. They really do sound quite nice and tidy upfront, but a little digging proves them absolutely wrong.

I agree that an amazing amount of nutrients can be had from quality animal products. It would be far safer and more nutritious to consume a diet made entirely from quality meat, dairy and animal fats, than to try and scrape by on vegetables. I do believe that vegetables and fruits can have their place in a healthy diet, but without the animals foods it won’t be worth much. The animals fats are especially important for utilizing all those fat-soluble vitamins – produce can’t compete with that.

I agree completely. I look on veggies and fruits as more of an enjoyable and nutritious complement to a animal-based diet, rather than the other way around. Of course, everyone I know thinks I’m crazy for this. All the studies and carefully reasoned arguments in the world can’t change minds about how unhealthy meat and, in particular, animal fats are.

arachidonic acid, while being an omega6, is still necessary. We actually need just a bit more of 6 than 3. The problem is that we get WAY to much 6 and not enough 3 because of the Standard American Diet. I take krill oil, and I’m going to cut back to one tab a day. All I eat meatwise is grassfed meats or wildcaught fish, both of which are balanced as far as the 6’s and 3’s go. Then there’s the dozen or so eggs (from a local farm, mostly). I eat 0 grains and 0 processed foods, so no problems there. We don’t want to swing the 3’s to the point that we have more of them than the 6’s.
Right? If I’m wrong, someone chime in and re-educate me.

Yes, that sounds right. Here’s an interesting post on O3-to-O6 ratios in relation to quantity which sums up, “this suggests that the single best way to avoid a heart attack is to reduce omega-6 consumption and ensure an adequate source of omega-3. The lower the omega-6, the less the omega-3 matters.”

It also suggests that an overconsumption of omega-6 can be fairly well off-set with an increase in omega-3, but that a lower omega-6 intake overall is preferable.

The average Americain diet gets an astonishing 7% of calories from omega-6 and almost no omega-3! Which makes sense given that the amount of omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in meat is in strong correlation to the health of the animal. Many factory-produced animal foods have a ratio of 20:1, while grass-fed animals tend to have around a 4:1 ratio (Sixty percent of the fatty acids in grass are omega-3s, while grain provides no omega-3s). And this ratio will detioriorate linearally the longer a grass-fed animal is grain-finished in a feed lot, losing almost half of it’s omega-3 fatty acids in the first two months.

If it takes 6 months for an animal to completely deteriorate in omega-3 health, then possibly it takes that long to restore overall omega 3 health? Assuming that the rate of restoration is the same as the rate of detiorioration.

As long as you don’t eat any vegetable oils except for olive, palm, coconut, and certain nut oils, your omega 6 to omega 3 ratio will be automatically much better than the standard American diet. I would guess that polyunsaturated veggie oils, rather than CAFO meat, are the main contributor of omega 6s in the SAD. It’s what nearly everyone, restaurant or individual, cooks with; they’re in “healthy” salad dressings, including the low fat ones; and they even manage to find a way into places they blatantly don’t belong, like ice cream. Ice cream!

On the other hand, fish tend to have a PUFA imbalance in the opposite direction – they have more omega 3s than omega 6s. So if you eat fish, grass-fed meats (which are 2:1 or 1:1, the ideal ratios), and avoid most vegetable oils, you probably have no reason to take krill oil at all.

I’m a fan of your blog and, as a 21 year old lifetime vegetarian, I’ve taken to heart the importance of reducing refined carbohydrate consumption while increasing protein intake. I’m in wholehearted agreement with you that many vegetarians, as well as non-vegetarians, make poor dietary choices based mostly on refined and processed foods.

However, the “meat is murder” argument that Keith “debunks” in her book fails to address the nuanced and more subtle tenants of a belief in non-violence that many vegetarians, including myself, invest in as an inspiration for our dietary choices. In short, I acknowledge that the beginnings and sustenance of life is reliant upon the deaths of other living beings, and that my continued existence is tied to the deaths of countless other living beings. Despite this, I continue my vegetarian diet in the hopes that I will ease the suffering of as many sentient lives as possible. A futile endeavor, perhaps, but we’re all now reminded of the “that’s one less starfish on the beach” scenario. Several Eastern belief systems and religions that promote or encourage vegetarian diets, reconcile the “life is death” dilemma with still maintaining a vegetarian diet – something I won’t go into here, as its beyond the scope of my post.

And I’ll speak for myself here when I say that I have no qualms or take no moral high-ground on folks that eat meat, or with folks that choose any dietary lifestyle because ultimately, what we choose to put in our bodies is a deeply personal decision that should ideally be based on sound science and education. However, as you said in an earlier post, we all make health concessions in favor of certain lifestyle decisions. I respect your research into the biological necessities for meat consumption, yet I remain unconvinced to switch my diet based on the health concerns of a vegetarian diet mostly because many of my vegetarian relatives and older acquaintances have lived well into their 80s, 90s and a lucky few beyond, all while enjoying limited health issues and mostly active and pain-free lifestyles until their passing. Anecdotal evidence, yes, but still enough to reassure me that my vegetarian diet will not leave me weak, suffering from ailments or nutritionally deficient (especially considering available supplementation) .

Anyways, I enjoy the blog and the dialogue, keep up the good work. Cheers and continued health.

Those Eastern belief systems are pro-vegetarian because it reduces physical capability and libido, allowing oneself to be more disconncted from one’s bodily realities and feel more like a being of pure spirit.

It’s really not about the animals at all, but about a particular sort of religious solipsism.

This is simply not true.
What you term ‘Eastern belief systems’ is really made up of a vast range of beliefs and practices. I’d be interested to know which specific belief system you’re referring to?
I don’t know much about many ‘Eastern belief systems’ but I know that the reason that Theravada Buddhists avoid meat eating is to do with compassion for all beings and the belief that people can experience ‘re-birth’ (similar to reincarnation) into an animal; so all beings should be respected.

Your friends are healthy and vegetarian because the seriously unhealthy vegetarians tend to “drop out” and stop being vegetarians, as Lierre Kieth did. What’s left are the lucky ones who didn’t gain weight or have a bazillion other new problems, making it look like vegetarianism is a healthy choice. It doesn’t always take as long as it did for Keith, either; take Chris Masterjohn’s article on his own experiences with vegetarianism: http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Vegetarianism.html

So, yes, your evidence is quite anecdotal and thoroughly useless to prove that vegetarians are not nutritionally deficient. If a diet requires supplementation, can you really say it’s healthy?

I think some people may be built more for vegetarianism than others. My grandma ate steak and veggies for every meal, so did my mom, and I was fed hot dogs and cheddar cheese (quite poor quality food imo that I would never eat now days) as a little kid. I spent a year and a half as a vegetarian, a year as a vegan, and in all honesty felt absolutely terrible. I was tired and freezing all the time. I was getting stress fractures from running less than 10 miles per week (yes, i’m somewhat guilty of chronic cardio). As soon as I shifted my diet to pretty much what Mark recommends, all my problems immediately went away. No more chronic indigestion, chronic heartburn, 10am, noon time, 2pm, and 4pm slumps, etc etc etc… I do see some people who are vegetarians and seem quite happy and are doing well, but I don’t think it’s the best diet for everyone.

I’m all for organic cleaner meat, who wouldn’t be? The only reason people don’t is because it’s expensive, solely because they’ve created this chain of making it easy and faster to produce. It may be expensive now, but much cheaper in the long run. I’d rather be healthy and live long, than to save a few bucks. I just watched the movie “Food inc” and all this rings true, it’s pretty sad and almost insane how they can produce such poisonous food, and the government and most public has no clue, or is blinded. I hope Organic food continues to grow and eventually surpass anything that’s “conventionally” grown.

have you read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma?”
If you haven’t you should. It forever changed my view of “organic.” Look for the label “sustainably harvested” instead. Organic still usually means its conventionally grown. It is true that meat is free of hormones and antibiotics, and veggies are free of pesticides. But it doesn’t mean that the cows eat grass or that the chickens don’t live in claustrophobic, poop filled houses.

Great post, once again. I have no qualm with people making dietary choices to the like of vegetarianism, fruitarianism and other dietary lifestyles. But I have a distaste for those who turn their dietary choices into a religion by condemning others for their dietary choices, through such guilt weaponry like “meat is murder.”

Beyond the fact that we have evolved specialized jaws and teeth to be an omnivore (which takes a very very long time to do), we did have one distant cousin that evolved to eat nothing but plant matter. Australopithecus Robustus had a massive jaw, jaw muscles and large flat teeth that were better equipped for grinding and mashing plant matter. I seem to recall my professor telling us that they knew they ate bark (perhaps from a dig?)and other fibrous materials. I should also add that the Robustus line…died out.

As well, some of the earliest evidence of brain growth among early human ancestors were settlements found near water sources where a lot of fish and shellfish was eaten.

THOSE places are where our early ancestors developed larger brains, went on to fashion tools and developed language areas of the brain (which they can see in the way the skull has formed to include brocas area of the brain – responsible for speech as in Homo Hablis).

If it wasn’t for meat, we would NOT be where we are now.

It’s in our nature to eat meat, it’s our choice not too. I don’t know why people make things so damn complicated.

It wasn’t meat that our earliest ancestors ate that enhanced brain development, it was seafood, well known for supporting brain growth.

And certainly eating GRASS-FED meats in small quantities may support a healthy diet, but 16-oz steak? And how can the earth support the production of enough meat to support the growing appetite of 7 billion human? It is not sustainable and the factory-farming of beef tortures animals, poisons humans and destroys the environment.
Need any more reason to not eat meat or at least, to eat it in very small quantities?

Also a lot of our fruit and vegetables come from outside of the US where kids and the poor are tortured by long hours of repetitive motions of picking our fruits and vegetables just so they can make enough to feed their families for 1 more day. But down with meat! Don’t torture those poor animals souls! Torture another kid instead and have him start picking our produce as soon as he can walk to keep it cheap, let the kid have a complex and live a miserable tortured life instead! I don’t advocate for either tortured animals raised for meat or human trafficing, but if I had to choose a life to save from torture, it would be the human life. My point is I’m sick of hardcore vegetarians and vegans that like to put their noses in the air and go on and on about all the ways meat eating is wrong and ending with “Meat is murder”, get off your high horse, not any one way of living is 100% perfect. I eat grass fed and wild caught every chance I can splurge, but unfortunately I do have to eat a tortured chicken sometimes and you eat veggies picked by tortured kids trying to make enough to buy a meal for the day. So can we stop pointing fingers and hating on each other. If you like the way you eat then keep doing it and I’ll eat the way I like to. If your so passionate about tortured steaks why don’t you start a movement instead of telling others what they’re doing wrong?

While interesting, this doesn’t change the fact that many people can’t tolerate grains in their diet, whether from reactions to gluten or simply the carbohydrate content. I would also venture to guess that the intake of grains prior to modern agriculture was 1) sporadic, 2) (when seasonally available) of limited quantities relative to modern consumption, and 3) even that amount of time is not sufficient for the kinds of genetic adaptations that would be necessary for our species to consume large quantities of grains without trouble. That this is the case can be seen by the numerous incidences of celiac disease, among other conditions. Ultimately this doesn’t really change anything about the dietary recommendations stemming from an evolutionary nutrition perspective.

If 100,000 years is too long to adapt to a food source, then why do milk-drinking cultures have such a higher rate of milk tolerance despite only several thousand years of using livestock for milk?

Also, there are known genes that are correlated with gluten intolerance, and these genes are somewhat rare. Doesn’t this show that most peoples have evolved to tolerate at least moderate amounts of grains well in their diets?

Also, I think humans have been drinking raw milk and domesticated animals for much longer than we think.
My grandfathers family is of nomadic middle-eastern descent (spelling?).
All of his children and grandchildren (me included) have 2 extra ribs at the bottom of the rib cage (females on top of their extra rib), 1 extra vertabrae and 3 kidneys.

What do the scientists make of this?

We all have a HUGE craving for raw milk and our health actually goes down hill if we don’t have it. Could it be that the extra bone formation has to do with the large amounts of calcium available to us? And the extra kidney to process the protein, etc?

Would love to hear an explaination for all of this, because I can’t find anything about our weird excess healthy bone and extra organ formation online.

Surely we all have the ability to drink milk when we are infants, we just loose it when we get older. The mutation to keep doin something we could do at birth is much simpler than to evolve something we have never been able to do….

Prof. Dr. Iain Stewart actually says the grain in the early ages was used to replant grasses in areas that humans figured out how to move water from underground, above ground and form artificial ponds.
Besides using the water for themselves of course and their gardens. He observed some of the evidence in the desert regions of northern Africa.

Those artificial ponds lured prey to them so they could hunt it without having to march 30 miles a day and track it.

Prof. Stewart says that the early agriculture was not for us, but for the prey.

For that reason, thats why I’m not quite as down on grains as Mark. He always rants about lectins, phytates, etc, but these things are present in just about all seeds, nuts included, which he eats. I don’t think seeds of any form, whether they be nuts, grains, beans should form the bulk of the diet, but to me using a few oats to make a meat loaf isn’t much different than eating a handful of almonds and I don’t consider either one particularly harmful.

Marks also allows (on top of daily nut consumption) dark chocolate which is extremely high in phytates. So if you figure someone eats daily nuts, seeds and dark chocolate that’s pretty damn bad for your bones and teeth.
I don’t think your occassional oats in meat loaf will hurt you compared to the nut, seed and chocolate consumption suggested.

The part of the plant that is needed to procreate the plant is toxic, no matter which plant. Even the seeds on the strawberries are toxic…xept we swallow them whole, they are indigestible and come out whole. Grinding up seeds, nuts, kernels, grain, whatever one wants to call it, and consuming it is bad for your health.

Nuts, seeds, grains, legumes etc.. are also higher in phosphate which sucks calcium straight out of your bones and teeth.

If someone is against grains they should also be against nuts and seeds imo. because it falls under the same category. Nuts are consumed seldom by humans…I’m from europe and chestnuts are only available around October-November and have to be boiled or roasted to be consumable. That is the only time a year we used to eat nuts. Hazelnuts don’t grow in large quantities, you find a couple of wild bushes within a 20 km/2. Most of the time little rabbits and other little forest creatures have their homes right under the bushes.

I’m loving these articles in defense of meat…uhh I mean food. The point you make about death being necessary for life is very important, a lot of people forget this, not just vegetarians but religious people. They forget how life works and then get caught in these mind traps.
When I talk about food I get really passionate and people think I’m getting mad or something. I’ve just always had this fire inside me. Next time I meet a vegetarian, instead of having this long, annoying debate over meat eating, I’ll just tell that person to go to your website.
When I come to this website, I’m thinking Mark’s daily steak, not apple. hehe

Thank you for such an articulate and open-minded response to Mark’s post. It surprises me, to be honest, because in my experience vegetarians and vegans can be rather hostile towards those who have different beliefs. Thank you for showing a more respectful side than I have been exposed to in the past.

However, I want to comment on the difference between vegetarians and vegans, because I realize many people tend to categorize these as the same when there are marked differences.

Many vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy without crossing their beliefs, since these foods aren’t associated with violence (if produced humanely). The abundance of nutrients in these foods, such as the fat-soluble vitamin A and the B-complex vitamins, can for most people make up for nutrients that would normally be obtained through meat. Eggs and dairy, after all, are animal foods. Not meat, but animal foods nonetheless.

For a vegan who might shun these two important categories of nutrition, there are definite nutrient deficiencies in their diet that could have serious negative effects on their health, such as impacting reproductive health and the health of the next generation. The generational impact of nutrition helps explain why young children today face such poor health from the start.

You say that you have acquaintances who lived to old age with good health, and that they were vegetarians. I am assuming they were not vegans, however. Is this correct? If so, this could explain their good health in spite of the absense of meat. Many people can enjoy fantastic health without eating meat, if they include quality dairy and eggs in their diet.

I agree that a diet is a very personal choice, and I certainly respect the choice a person makes for themselves. I realize that the decision of what to eat can extend beyond its nutritional value.

I simply wanted to clarify that choosing a diet free of meat is entirely different from choosing a diet free of animal products.

“Many vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy without crossing their beliefs, since these foods aren’t associated with violence (if produced humanely).”

Good luck finding eggs or dairy in which both the males and females lived out their entire natural lives. The reality is that egg and dairy production requires very few males, so most are slaughtered or destroyed. And, when the females get too old and production drops off, they often go to slaughter as well.

eggs and dairy are most definitely associated with violence. when you need to produce large numbers of female animals to consume their products, the males get “the final solution.” male chicks are killed, male calves are veal. “lacto-ovo” is such a copout.

And yet when you define violence in this way, you run into the presumption that a vegan diet involves no violence or death, which cannot be true. Of course, it may depend on your definition of violence. I understand how the idea of physically slaughtering a cow is perceived as “violent.”

But agriculture is not without its form of violence. Burning acres of natural habitat to grow crops doesn’t seem non-violent to me. Crowding out natural species to make room for crops and causing some animals to die off through starvation doesn’t strike me as non-violent, either. And to sustain mankind on plant foods this and similar actions are usually necessary.

The only way to truly reduce the amount of violence associated with what you eat is to produce it yourself. The moment you rely on someone else to produce your food for you, you are inviting a higher level of “violence” – simply because no food can be mass-produced without some level of violence.

I personally raise my own chickens for eggs. They are completely free-range birds. They might as well be wild except they nest in our coop at night and leave eggs for me at their leisure. We do not force them to rear more chicks than they desire, and we don’t kill off “unwanted males” either. We find it unnecessary to do so in our situation.

I realize that producing one’s own food is not available for everyone, but if eating “non-violent” food is your priority, then certain actions would have to be taken to make it so.

I should qualify this – I am not against violence to animals 🙂 I just think eating eggs or milk or fish as a copout (or plowing a field for that matter) is no less violent than eating meat. the wild pig I killed last month will feed us about 100k calories, one death only, and that frees up a tenth of an acre of prairie for a year that I dont depend on for bread. violence is necessary, cruelty is not.

Great read! I still have one problem with it comes to the meat vs plant argument. Most AHA adhering docs will tell you it’s ok to eat lots of cold water fishes because they contain lots of “healthy” saturated fats. Isn’t a saturated fat a “saturated fat?” I know this is not a fat discussion, but its fodder for this discussion. The response is that eating a pig yields heart unhealthy saturated fats, but eating flax, olive oils, and salmon yields heart healthy saturated fats.

I try to respond saturated fat is the same no matter where you get it from. Unless it comes from a trans fat.

“And, contrary to popular belief, meat and meat alone is not responsible for cancer, heart disease, and a whole host of other ailments.”

Mark, if you are going to criticize epidemiological or case-control studies for not determining cause and effect, you can’t make definitive statements like the one above without better evidence. So I ask, can you cite a controlled trial designed to test the hypothesis you stated as fact above?

hernie – that’s the beauty of understanding evolution. the default position is that the foods we have eaten since the dawn of human history do not kill us. new foods are suspect until proven safe. old foods are assumed safe until proven otherwise.

Mark might have more accurately said, “the hypothesis that meat is responsible for any of these ailments remains unproven”

Evolution can only prove that the foods we have eaten since the dawn of human history don’t kill us before we reproduce.

Given that most arguments against the health side effects of animal products are relative to diseases that usually occur later in generations enjoying unprecedented life length, that “evolutionary” argument seems wanting.

Andy, I would counter that with the notion that our offspring would inherit the nutritional disadvantage until the offspring of their offspring’s offspring are rendered completely vulnerable to the challenges of the big, bad world and it’s microbial denizens…playing out over several hundred thousand years of course.

Thanks for the response. Solid point regarding veganism but to be honest I bet I could find more than just a few vegans who also enjoy health and vitality late in their lives and live almost a century or more. That’s not really the point though, as I said earlier, its all anecdotal anyways – there are countless stories of pack-a-day smokers and hard alcoholics living till their past 100. As I understand it, and I think Mark would agree, keeping fit and eating clean, unprocessed and unhealthy are just hedging our own bets against future ailments and not a guarantee for long life – shit happens and/or sometimes people get really lucky.

I think the larger point I’m trying to get to is that often times, in health, as in life, there are many paths to one goal. If that goal is health, fitness, vitality and a departure from the afflictions of the body and mind present in today’s society then I submit again wholeheartedly that vegetarianism is ONE path to that goal. I’m not saying its the right way for everyone, or even most people. From what I’ve learned from this site and the Primal lifestyle is to be masters of our own health and guardians of our own body and to question what we are told about our health, fitness and diet. Instead of replacing conventional wisdom with a new dogma, we need to understand that there are many ways to health, and infinite paths to fitness (depending on how you define it). No one should guilt you in or out of a new lifestyle, it should be a choice based on personal experience, education and a little experimentation to find out what works for YOU.

Oh, and just for the official record… no “reduced libido” here 😉 but thank you fbw for summarizing one tenant of multiple systems of beliefs from a giant region of the world into one completely misread or misinterpreted viewpoint.

Great reply! I hope my initial response didn’t seem close-minded. I simply wanted to address the difference between eating no meat and eating no animal products (realizing you understood that already).

But I don’t think this difference is understood by many others. Someone considering a meat-free diet may find it helpful to know how nutritious quality eggs and dairy can be for many people. As much as possible, people should have the information available so that ethics and nutrition can coexist.

Traditionally vegan diets were often prescribed to those who sought a higher calling, as a way of cleansing and purifying the body while the soul was on a path to spiritual enlightenment. It was not uncommon for this lifestyle to exclude procreation.

Societies focused on preserving the physical health of the next generation were more likely to emphasize animal foods of some kind. Women of child-bearing age were given special care to ensure healthy offspring, often being served the most prized animal foods available during this time of their life.

Please understand I have the utmost respect for both of these ways of life and everything in between. These different ways of eating most certainly have their respected place. My point is someone who wants to bear children and pass good health onto the next generation should seriously consider including quality animal foods in their diet.

I, too, know quite a few individuals who have reached close to 100 years old while smoking a pack a day and even eating Crisco. However, I think it’s imperative to point out the generational difference. These people most likely grew up in a time where nutrient-dense foods were more widely available and there was considerably less chemical exposure during the early years of life. However, we have no idea how healthy/unhealthy the following generations are turning out to be, because most of these people are still under the age of 65. But we can see that disease is more prevalant than ever, especially in the youngest generation. It’s important to recognize that health problems can compound with each generation if not corrected through proper nutrition.

I’m sure you can see I am mainly addressing nutrition and health with a generational view, rather than claiming one path to health is better than another. I don’t think that at all.

However, I do think that for a majority of people, those with the certain life goals will benefit from choosing a diet well-suited for those goals.

And I might add that eating meat in large quantities on a daily basis is NOT an ancestral thing, but a development of modern man. And eating meat has become a sign of affluence causing the peoples of emerging economic powers to desire more and more meat though they have, for centuries, eaten a low meat diet, and maintained a higher degree of health than most meat-eaters.

Many vegetarians are quick to praise the health of olive oil. Oleic acid is the beneficial part of it coming in at 70%.

Funny thing is, lard is the next best fat to provide that particular healthy substance with a whopping 45% oleic acid. So if you run out of heart healthy olive oil and need to cook something up, break out the maligned lard. It does do a body good.

I keep the grease from Sunday morning bacon frying for that very reason!

Also, an addendum: stearic acid, a saturated fat commonly found in animal products (including lard!) is metabolized in the body as oleic acid. So the real percentage of oleic acid in lard is more like 55%. Take that, AHA!

“abolitionist veganism” is a new approach I’ve just learned about. they maintain that animals have a natural right to free existence and should never be considered human property. presumably, if you accept this premise you not only have to stop eating them, but can’t keep an aquarium, can’t kill pests, and so on.

Obviously they don’t have a “natural” right to freedom if it is possible to keep them penned up. This applies to every other natural right, too. Rights are a human construct which are clearly not observable in nature. Property is a human construct, too.

I have been a vegetarian for the past three years for many of the reasons listed in the post and the last one. I believed it was not healthy to eat meat, I only pictured CAFO animals and its many problems, etc.

After finding Mark, the paleo diet (through Crossfit), Weston Price, Robb Wolf, and others, I have become pretty convinced about the merits of healthy meat and fish.

However the one thing which still is preventing me from reintroducing meat back into my diet is the worry I have over fat soluble heavy metals and pollutants. Even with organic pasture raised animals it would seem that a lot of heavy metals and other bad stuff would be present in the meat. I believe that eating organic vegetarian food would put a much lower chemical/ heavy metal load on the body. Are there any studies about this or advise from Mark or some of the other readers here?

that arachidonic acid question is a good one. but the largest contributor to AA in the american diet is from corn. and corn is in EVERYTHING!

luckily, meats and eggs have omega-3s as well as others, so the greatest danger is corn (a grain) not meat and eggs.

of course, the closer meat and eggs are raised to the way they’re supposed to be (i.e. free-range, grass fed, cage free, grazing) the higher their omega-3 content.

just as an aside, the closer we raise ourselves to the way we are supposed to be(i.e. eating a diet rich in antioxidant vegetables, fruits, and omega-3 rich meats) the higher our own omega-3 content.

we are animals, too, after all.

which is an interesting argument for the veg and vegan people (of which i was one) who are so pro-animal rights. what about our rights to live and eat in the way that provides us for the most healthy, humane existence possible? free-range, proper diet, enough exercise…you know a great life before we die to supply the soil with it’s food.

1. Plain and simple: I feel BEST when I eat red meat with a lot of fat on it. My energy is good, I think clearly, my sleep is excellent, my immunity is strong. And yes I eat a LOT of vegetables, too. But when I eat only vegetables — as I have tried on several occasions and for extended periods — I am not the same person.

2.Most of the vegetarians I have known — and yes this has been my experience — a) have a political axe to grind; and b) look frail, tired and sickly. Yes I have also known robust looking and acting vegetarians but they are the exception. I think, in any case, the type of diet any particular individual thrives on depends on the concept of biochemical individuality (see the book of that title by Roger J. Williams). We are all as unique on the inside (in terms of the size, shape and efficiency of our vital organs) as we appear on the outside and so we therefore have somewhat differing nutritional requirements of both macro and micro nutrients. While there may be a few people who thrive on a meatless diet — and I know of such a person — they are the exception, not the rule. On the whole, the human animal is not a vegetarian or vegan species. Mark, your work in helping us all understand our primal background and dietary requirements is profound; thank you!

Several years ago I put myself and my twins on a vegetarian diet, my one son did fine my other son and myself were plagued with continual bouts of gas and lethargy. In fact my son who didn’t do well is autistic and developmentally delayed and his teacher sent home a note with him complaining that he farts all day long in class.

If vegetarianism is such a good and healthy way to eat why were we plagued with so much gas? I don’t think our digestive systems were meant to eat that way. So though people may choose to eat that way, that is their business, it doesn’t mean that it is right.

Instead of us using our energy arguing with vegetarians I would like to see us start a political movement to make(by law) farming practices more humane and make our food consumption decrease overall(by education and by example).

I am a meat-eater who has not consumed any fruit or vegetables for the last 18 months and it hasn’t done me any harm!

The only addition to my diet from the plant kingdom nowadays are a pinch or two of herbs/spices to my meat for additional flavouring when required.

I plan a momentary deviation from that on Christmas day and that’s about all.

I don’t miss fruit or vegetables enough to make them a mainstay of my diet again (actually I was never that keen on vegetables but forced myself to eat them in the past because the CW said they were healthy!).

I eat carnivorously intermittently (IC – intermittent carnivory!) and I have to admit, those are the days when I feel best. I can’t describe it, except that I feel “well” on those days – not too much energy, but not lacking, either. No digestive problems at all. But it’s too expensive and too bizarre in the presence of others for me to keep it up all the time, so I still eat dairy, eggs, berries, and a few veggies most of the time. But, honestly, if I could afford to buy steaks and chops every day, I’d eat that way more often.

The longest I’ve gone without eating plant matter was about two weeks this summer, and without dairy/eggs (all-meat) was about two days, and I felt totally fine and non-scorbutic.

I’m exactly the same way. I feel best running on mostly red meat. I’m a volume eater, so I go through meat real fast when I’m a carnivore.

I love all the textures a flavors so I enjoy veg too, but the best part about vegetation is you can eat a ton and keep calories low. I love to eat so this is great, but my guts aren’t ever real excited about it.

There may be truth in this red meat report. Red meat is rich in iron, which man above ~24, and women after menopause have too much, and no good way to get rid of: except of blood donations or blood letting that few do.

This is not strictly true. The iron in meat is the heme form, while the iron in plant foods is the non-heme form. Heme iron is not assimilated when iron stores are full. Non-heme iron is not so readily assimilated (which is why vegans tend to get anaemia, also due to low vitamin B-12) but it is also not as well regulated by the body’s existing iron stores, so can build up to toxic levels over time.

Also, the liver will hang on to non-haem iron when endotoxins are present; fructose and alcohol both allow endotoxins from the gut to enter the bloodstream and subsequently the liver. It’s possible that alcohol and/or fructose can influence iron overload disorder in this fashion.

You guys, Mark and co., just proved my point against supposed Paleo advocates “proof” that our ancient ancestors were heavy meat eaters.. because they DID at times eat meat, doesn’t mean humans are MEANT or BUILT to eat meat…

plus the “tools” used to hunt/kill animals-meat, or the “cut marks” on fossil animal bones, doesn’t prove anything… those spears, tools, etc
were used LARGELY for protection for humans AGAINST large carnivorous predators.. same reason as residues, partial circumstantial evidence FOR eating grains as early as 100,000 years ago pointed out in this article, is shoddy at best…

The human digestive tract/enzyme system/organ system/etc prove the diet of humans, the same as with any animal in a zoo, the zoo keepers know exactly what type of food stuff is ideal and meant to be eaten by said animals…

ALso, because most vegans/vegetarians/raw foodist, sterotypically eat high grain diets, doesn’t mean they are correct or that they represent what a vegan/vegetarian/raw food diet IS or SHOULD be… so the Paleo crowd continously gets the typecasting wrong… same as if vegetarian hippies classify categorically that all meat consumption is bad because 300 million AMericans eat the high fat, high cholesterol SAD diet, which includes a ton of meat… well, they are not equivalent, since Paleo diets choose far heaalthier cuts of meat…

why can none in EITHER camp get these arguments right and complete, and take ego or emotion out of it and look at pure physiology/anatomy/digestion/etc?

PS. the human intestinal tract, small and large, is ~30ft long, divided by an `2.5-3ft torso length (mouth to anus), makes the ratio 11-12 to 1, right in line with humans being a frugivore/herbivore…

PPS. Paleo advocates always point out that humans aren’t herbivores since we don’t have hind guts and don’t chew cud like cows, per se… and that fiber isn’t a nutrient to humans and can’t be digested, thereby somehow boasting their debunking arguemnts… NEWSFLASH… FIBER ISN’T MEANT TO BE USED AS NUTRITION IN A HUMAN DIET.. IT’S MEANT FOR BOWEL SWEEP AND INTESTINAL BULK FOR BOWEL MOVEMENTS, and to a lesser extent for SCFA production… geesh folks… how elementary can we be in these base arguments… if Mark would debate me, as a former bodybuilder of 15 years and also a former raw foodist/vegan, etc, I have all aspects in experience and can argue all sides with facts, not emotion or bias, I could refute all arguments used in this 2-part series by him that meat eating is normal/necessary/required by humans..

For all interested in this topic, I would recommend “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell, which presents a variety of scientific data related to this topic. In particular, the book describes the various types of scientific studies which correlate consumption of animal protein and certain diseases. (As one very interesting example, Casein, one of the two protein families in cow’s milk, has been shown in a multiple studies to essentially act like miracle-grow for cancer cells.)

The idea that no culture could ever thrive on a largely vegetarian or vegan diet seems to be ignoring that roughly 1 Billion Chinese live on what is very close to a vegan diet. (not for moral or health reasons, but because they are relatively poor).

Hardly. You forget that most vegetable dishes in China are flavored using available meat sources, most often fish. In fact, the basis of many sauces in china are seafood proteins (Oyster Sauce, Fish sauce, etc.) Further, eggs are used a lot in Chinese cooking, as they are a highly affordable, highly nutritious source of protein. Most Chinese soup bases are also composed of meats (particularly fish). The Chinese also only recently started eating fresh vegetables (and in the poorer areas they do not, because nightsoil is used to grow such produce). Sure they eat tofu, but I fail to see how that is vegan when served with oyster sauce or a little ground pork for flavor.

further, i fail to see how china is ‘thriving’ on a so-called vegan diet, when in the underdeveloped countryside it is easy to find cases of malnutrition.

That China Study example that you cited is about as intellectually dishonest as a big study can get..at least from the perspective that it has been promoted and recieved.

Keep in mind, all the rats surveyed were given massive portions of aflatoxin, a mold based poison (found relatively often in peanuts, btw) in order to deliberately INDUCE liver cancer. So the rats who ate the most protein garnered the most cancer, yes. That’s because the rats who didn’t eat protein at all were so sickly that cellular proliferation, both healthy and unhealthy, was unable to happen. The protein was keeping the rats alive.

Those Chinese, though mostly vegan, find ways to incorporate meat products into their diet if only for flavoring purposes.

I feel you made a strong argument against many reasons for vegetarianism. However I don’t feel that you’ve adequately addressed the common concern among vegetarians for the suffering of animals.
While I see no issue with the killing of animals, I feel that modern forms of meat production inflict far greater suffering than what would occur in nature.
If animals are capable of feeling pain in the same way that humans do, shouldn’t we take this suffering into account?

Unfortunately, you didn’t address cruelty or animal rights at all, the real reasons for eschewing meat. You did address the animals’ deaths and countered that we vegans also must kill to live. But harvesting a vegetable is not a violent act in the same way as slaughtering a mammal. Of course we evolved eating meat. We also evolved waging wars, but I doubt you advocate for that. We have the capacity to evolve spiritually beyond that point now.

the absolute evil is the sterilization of millions of acres of prairie for the legions of soy and wheat worshippers. how many animals were killed so the ecosystem could be converted for your use? how many more are poisoned, burned, plowed under and mangled so that you can harvest a crop? me, I’ll happily “eschew” on a hunk of beef liver that required only one animal be killed.

She briefly entertains studying with a mystic breatharian, hoping to (tongue-in-cheekily) learn to subsist purely on oxygen. She spends hours picking slugs from her garden and goes to relocate them. Nothing works. She keeps coming back to death.

“Let me live without harm to others. Let my life be possible without death.” Keith realizes this vegetarian plea (which “borders on a prayer”) is impossible to fulfill. She can’t live and eat without something dying, and that’s the whole point of it all. Death is necessary and natural. Circle of life, you know? Without death of some sort, life would get a whole lot worse.

The above was taken from the review on The Vegetarian Myth that was provided. So saying that death is inevitable and cannot be avoided doesn’t mean that it is okay to kill 10 billion animals a year in the US alone. We should try to avoid unnecessary death.

Remember the Holocaust? Remember when it was stopped because millions of people were dying for no reason? Hmmm I wonder if this is similar to the meat industry and killing millions of animals when we can obviously live without doing so?

And then there are people who say animals don’t have natural rights. “We are more advanced and have philosophy and know where/what we are” is something I’ve heard before.
Well what if there was some creature that was more advanced than us and wanted to harvest us and eat us. Do we still have no natural rights compared to this superior being?
According to your logic: having less of some ability/logic means that you are inferior and can be used however the superior chooses.

Think of being the animal. You certainly don’t want death. So why should we refuse their desire to live?
If you eat meat I honestly want you to look up material on the life of a factory farmed: turkey, chicken, cow, pig, duck. And more. And then tell me that is how living things deserved to be treated.

Drawing a plow across the ground is indeed a violent act to the grubs, bugs, and worms who are sliced in two or three pieces by it.

Removing insect larvae from the crop before harvest in whatever way it is done (by pesticides, birds, other insects, or by good old fashioned picking and smashing) is pretty violent to those little baby insect larvae.

The removal of gophers, moles, deer, and bunnies from agricultural areas has quite often been violent. Scissor traps and poisons. Awesome. But if they were not removed or protected in one way or another, there would be no crop. Are you growing your own to know what’s going down?

The absolute horror that meat farms inflict on animals is atrocious. Meat eating has never been the issue, it’s the f’ing evil nature that is attached to the production of it. Where do you think those 99 cent cheeseburgers from Wendys come from?

?”And even if someone decided to go completely carnivore, so what? You can obtain all the essential nutrients that way, if you plan it well. I’d put a slab of organic, grass-fed beef liver, a heart steak, and a side of lamb brains up against a bowl of couscous and lima beans any day.”

Do you have any training or formal education on human nutrition? If you did you would know that if the diet does not provide enough carbohydrate the body will make its own glucose from protein. This involves breaking down the proteins in blood and tissues into amino acids, then converting them to glucose. This is called gluconeogenesis. When eating a diet that is very low in carbohydrate, our body will take amino acids from the blood first, and then from other tissues like muscles, heart, liver, and kidneys. Using amino acids in this manner over a prolonged period of time can cause serious, possibly irreversible, damage to these organs.

do you have any training in biochemistry? it is not impossible to survive without carbohydrates, many animals do it, from centipedes to sharks to eagles to tigers. have humans somehow evolved a DISABILITY in this area? don’t think so. from what you’re saying, I should be sure to consume plenty of blood, tissues, heart, liver and kidneys so that I can fuel my gluconeogenesis… I know, I know, my apparent good health after years of eating this way is physiologically impossible. there must be some hidden possibly irreversible damage of which I am unaware and one day 7 or 8 decades from now I will drop dead and prove you right.

I fail to see where eating eggs is a violent act. When you eat an egg, you’re eating an unfertilized ovum. Hens still lay eggs with no rooster around, they just don’t develop and hatch into chicks. I can see the violence aspect if one is speaking of factory farm chickens kept in poor conditions, but free range chickens eating their natural diet and providing eggs to humans I see no ethical issue with.

The ethical issue with eggs, even those that are unfertilized, is what happens to unwanted males and old laying hens. Farms with no roosters buy hens from breeders, and breeders need very few of the 50% of chicks that happen to be male. So, most male chicks are destroyed. And while it’s certainly possible to let laying hens live out their natural lives, egg production falls off as they get older, so old hens are typically slaughtered, even on small farms raising pastured eggs. There are similar issues with dairy. Bottom line: slaughtered animals are a byproduct of egg and milk production.

Really? You feel the need to DEFEND meat eaters? You guys are absolutely insane, the way you FREAK out if a vegetarian or (god forbid) a vegan is within 10 feet of you. YOU KNOW you guys freak out and get all defensive if someone happens to mention he or she doesn’t eat meat. Go eat your dead animals you nerd.

I’ve been in bodybuilding for 10 years and I’m curious – Ross, do you think non-vegans / non-vegetarians run the other way when they sense the presence of a vegetarian/vegan because they don’t feel like being judged, being “accused of murder”, or “being a bad person”? I personally eat a lot of veggies and some meat, and more often than not, if someone engages in conversation on this subject, it usually comes with a hostile undertone – almost like imposing religion on someone. I just think there are better ways to approach the subject.

was hoping for a bit more from this article, but these arguments are pritty weak really.
it’s easy to just wash your hands of battery farming and condemn it as unsustainable without offering a useable altenative that the whole world can use. but, as you admit, pasture farming can’t feed the world. it@s an idealistic, relatively cruel way of providing meat which the average person never sees or buys from.

another beef I had is when you point to the correlation between red meat consumption and cancer, heart disease etc and say it’s a correlation, not a causation. if there is a direect correlation between just these 2 things, and the read meat isn’t the cause then that means that being prone to cancer, heart disease etc causes people to eat more red meat. retarded. sure you can blame the other factors and pretend that there isn’t a direct correlation just between eating red meat and bad health,but the science speaks for itself. another weak argument.

I would like you to address the most commonly heard vegan argument against meat eating: minimising harm. yes to survive, we necessitater the death of other beingas, nobody will argue against that. the argument I hear the most is that the vegan lifestyle mimimises the about of harm and suffering in the world. you talk about deforestation for soy, but that soy feeds factory farm animals. my vegan friendsa eat organic soyp, and say that the land used to farm animals would be better used growing soy so there is no need to keep tearing down forests. how do you address these arguments?

So what you are saying is that association is science and we need no further evidence. If that’s the case, let’s get rid of all firefighters. They are 100% associated with house fires. Get rid of them and house fires will go away.

Ridiculous you say. Of course it is. We know firefighters don’t cause house fires. When it comes to red meat, we do not know that it causes anything.

Association is not causation. It is complete and utter folly make any decision based soley on association. You are making huge assumptions when you do. Bad science!

Humans can work well (and be healthy) with many fuels, from the blood / milk / meat diet of the Massai people to the almost vegetarian diet of many asians. As I can see you need and certain amount of animal food plus vegetables to have a good and long life. Ethical cuestions are different for health ones and you are mixing all. We domesticate farm animals many years ago and use them like the plants that we cultivate: To eat them. Farm animals have the same rigths of humans? please!!

Vego’s/vegans have it wrong… when you eat meat you’re not eating death, you’re eating life! I’m not saying humans as a whole are necessarily more important than other species, but i will say that MY life and those i care about are way more important than any other species.

Six years of a supposedly nutritious and well-planned vegan diet left me with many nutritional deficiencies as well as the pain of brittle dry skin, rashes, digestive disturbances,high cholesterol, anxiety, aggression, feeling miserable and constantly being ravenously hungry despite stuffing myself full. Converting to a regular “healthy” diet slightly improved some of these. Medical specialists, naturopaths, chinese medicine practitioners etc.. using medications, herbs, supplements had no impact.

Yet after recently converting to a predominantly primal diet i have had massive improvements in all of these areas. My doctor now says i have the best nutritional and health profile of any of his patients! 🙂

That the traditional Inuit and Masai people lived on 100% animal product diets with exceptional health is proof we don’t need to eat grains or legumes.

At the end of the day I don’t need some “junk science” study to tell me what i am eating is unhealthy for me. Indeed The China Study as referenced by some pro-vegetarian/vegan posters is a typical example of this kind of flawed junk science – see link for a critique of it. Good health to you all!

No living thing wants to die, whether it is plant, animal, bacteria or fungus. That’s why they all have defence mechanisms, including plants. Poisonous alkaloids, enzyme inhibitors, thorns, tannins. Many species even chemically communicate threat of insect plague to other same-specied plants to increase their tannin content to deter such threat. If you talk to anyone who practices energetic therapies such as kinesiology or reiki they will tell you they can feel the life force in plants just as readily as they do in animals. Regarding vegans and vego’s i propose that having “sap on your hands” is no different to us meat-eaters having what they misleadingly call “blood on our hands”. 🙂

I stopped eating meat when was 14 years old. I didn’t want to kill animals and that seemed like the most sensible way to stop. Although that was before the whole vegetarianism is healthier craze, my parents respected my beliefs and supported my choice. Over the years I went on and off fish, but mostly on (thank God for that!)

Fast forward 14-20 years. As an adult I started having all sorts of digestive and allergy issues. First it was lactose, then gluten. Now I can’t eat cow’s milk, gluten, eggs, corn or soy without getting eczema, hives or an upset stomach.

It took a while to get pregnant with my first child because my sex hormone levels were so low, and I miscarried twice.

When my mother died a year+ after my son’s birth, and I was feeling horribly exhausted all the time, a nutritionist friend who practices Traditional Chinese Medicine suggested that I add some meat back into my diet. “Think of it as medicine,” she said. I was feeling so awful that I agreed to give it a shot.

I tried everything: poultry, red meat and fish. Chicken did nothing special for me, but I rediscovered my LOVE for turkey. Beef and buffalo were tasty, but my years as a veggie made it hard for me to feel gung ho about eating them. Fish became a staple. After a year or so of having animal protein back on the menu, getting pregnant and nursing kid #2 was a cinch.

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon the whole paleo community, and the scientific and medical literature supporting a low-carb, no grain, animal protein diet. I’m a scientist by training, so I couldn’t ignore the data. And the data says that I was doing it ALL WRONG for a long time.

I still can’t bring myself to add lots of beef and/or buffalo to my diet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. Hell, I may just grab a burger for dinner tonight see how it makes me feel.

He also instructed us to practice self-control, so that means we may not drink or eat to our heart’s content even if it’s the food he gave us. Jesus ate fish(meat) and bread(grain). He also drank wine(grape juice), but God warns against drinking to the point of drunkenness(debauchery). He also has many other instructions for us other than eating.

Correlation does not equal causation in this instance because a. Red meat is carcinogenic depending on how you cook it – look up acrylamide b. Preserved meat studied separate to just meat shows a correlation to heart disease , look it up. 🙂 loads of people don’t get correlations and causations

Many of these points are quite validate. I really do appreciate your comment on the nature of death. However I do not totally agree with all you’ve said. I can easily produce scientist and archaeologists who support the idea of original man being a scavenger. Also, consider this, a cow can run 17mph and lets say for good measure the average human can run 9mph. So lets say that human did catch that cow, how many humans do you know that could tear a cow apart with their bare hands? And also are teeth really are not made to rip flesh from bone. Yes i do realize man is the ultimate predator because of our brain and the ability to create tools and traps. But does this make it necessarily right? I am not demonizing anyone who eats meat, but I do not agree with the absurd amount of meat being consumed in America and other gluttonous countries. I also do see any justification for the abuse that occurs in factory farms. So okay a cow “has” to die for you to live? Well even if this is true, how is abuse and torture okay? Lastly, I see so many of these blogs all over the internet (that is arguments for or against eating meat). Frankly, its getting old vegetarians need to realize that all people will NOT give up meat or even a majority of people. And Meat eaters really need to stop criticizing vegetarians for living a lifestyle they approve of. And vegans..please stop acting like your better than ALL of us vegetarians and meat eaters alike, because like this man said death is imminent, as much as you’d like to reduce it it will always occur.
Just my thoughs

The argument you’re forgetting here is cows/chickens and the sort only transfer 10 percent of the energy to us as they get from grass or their feed of choice? Seems very inefficient doesn’t it?
Also just as we’ve “evolved” to use tools to eat meat we are still very much more plant eaters. Tribes to this day only eat meat about once a week unnecessary amounts of protein cause stress on the kidneys and the enormous amounts of fat clog our arteries. Not to mention meat causing digestive tract cancers but I can leave that out if you really think that is just a correlation. Anyways just as we evolved to eat meat 1000s of years ago we can no evolve to not eat meat our spectrum of food we can choose nowadays is endless, hemp seed is known to contain all of the amino acids the human body needs (no need for meat anymore) We have so much food that contains protein also forgot to mention hemp seed has more protein by weight than meat what? So why continue this endless addiction of poor dieting and eating ridiculous amounts of meat, have you ever seen vegan bodybuilders? They’re out there and probably healthier than anyone here. I believe that the overeating of meat and and other useless foods is causing all this heart disease and digestive cancer just from the data that I’ve seen but hey I’d like to see you provide data that proves me wrong.

well, yes, we could “evolve” to eat vegetables only, but to do that, you’d have to dial in an environment where only the humans that could utilise energy the best from vegetation would be the chosen ones to “breed”, all others would have to be terminated, and only selectively “breed” those humans, so they eventually, over 50,000 generations or so, evolved an intestine twice as long as we have now, and 2 or 3 extra stomachs – of course we’d have to be much bigger than we are now, and we’d have less use for opposing thumbs and a slender body – we would need to bigger and more robust, and be geared to spend most of our day eating in order to process the vast amount of vegetation needed to get the required nutrients. We would have no need of hands with opposing thumbs, and hoof like limbs would be better suited to carry our large body around all day. This mythical “human” would look nothing like the “meat powered” humans of today, and if your going to go to that extent, one asks why not just eliminate all humans from the earth and be done with it, what purpose would they server ? Take a look in the mirror, your a highly evolved killing machine, you are not designed to efficiently get energy from plants, you have evolved over millions of years into what you are now, purely because your ancestors worked out they could gain energy from meat, and those adapted to get the most energy from it where feed up to evolve other things like hands and brains, resulting in the most dangerous and destructive creature on the planet Earth.

I have looked at this website and surprised about how much bullshit it entails. Carnivores were never supposed to eat cooked meat and if there was a fire in the forest they wouldnt eat any cooked remains of animals so unless youre eating a purely sushi diet, a primal diet is very carcinogenic not to mention the stress it puts on your kidneys as I mentioned before. All of the data here is anecdotal experience and I’m sure a lot of you just enjoy eating meat and were the kind of kids that didn’t like eating there vegetables . We can get all of the same organic molecules from plants as we can from meat so if somehow you’re telling me it is more healthy to eat mostly meat than you are absolutely wrong, you need to pick the right foods. Also the treatment of animals in factories is wrong, our society has lost its integrity of respect for animals as food and should not use it for nutrition anymore. Imagine your whole family growing up in Auschwitz knowing you are going to die at 18 and knowing your whole family will have the same fate. Our overpopulation cannot and will not be able to be nourished by meat as it is an inefficient product.

I think it is appropriate for people to feel some amount of guilt at the taking of a life for whatever reason. But following the cruelty argument of vegetarians/vegans to its logical conclusion leads you to jainism. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. And if you feel like it is going a bit overboard (and contains some inherent hypocrisy) as far as actually living in this world, then you might want to rethink your argument.

Feedlots are bad, but they certainly aren’t the only way that livestock are raised.

I don’t think the central argument here whether or not we can accept that death is a part of life…of course it is. Vegetarians struggle with the fact that suffering does NOT have to be a part of death or life, especially if it can be helped. So what does this mean? As long as the animal doesn’t suffer/feel pain, etc. then killing it for food is okay. I think therein lies the main point that most people have to figure out for themselves. Are you cool with killing or contributing to the direct death of an animal for pleasure/taste?

Really, suffering doesn’t have to be a part of death? when was the last time you died? It certainly doesn’t look pretty, and I’d wager everything that it doesn’t feel good either, under any circumstances.

Suffering doesn’t have to be a part of life? I’m guessing you must be about 16. And even if you are that old, you must be pretty well positioned to think that.

This just sounds overall silly.

I’m wondering if you would sit there and let a cloud of mosquitoes suck your blood, or leave a tick on yourself so they don’t have to feel suffering or pain. Or have you put them in a category of robots?

In fact, if you had read the article, you would see there are many reasons beyond “pleasure/taste” why there is evidence that eating meat is good for you, and important for your well being. I have certainly found it to be so, after decades of mostly grain-eating. (poor choices).

nobody said life was pretty. nobody should say that one species is inherently better than other (though many do). i don’t think the mosquito sucking blood out of your arm is doing it because he thinks he is better than you, or the osprey eating a fish is doing it because he thinks he is better than the fish. life is messy. but here we are.

Five years ago, my father’s death led to a depression which left me in a deplorable state. I ate, drank and smoke all I wanted until I become obese and couldn’t go up one floor of stairs. The Primal Blueprint came to the rescue and Grok become my role model. I got rid of all carbohydrates from my house and started my anti grains crusade. I alienated friends and family and drove insane a plethora of waiters and cooks that really wanted me to have the rice, potatoes and bread. I lost more than a quarter of my body weight and reach 10% body fat. Plus I loved the meals. How could I miss bread when I was eating filet mignon? I knew animals were dying for my food but that’s the natural order of things. The lion never wonders if the gazelle must die for it’s food, why would I? I am part of Homo Sapiens, the most evolved animal on Earth. Plus I live in North America, and I can have it all. Natural selection at it’s best, with me at its center.

And then one day a confused deer ran across the road and slammed into my van. As it changed course trying to run back to the safety of the forest 2 tons of metal rolled over its body; the tow truck behind me. The truck driver asked me if I had a hammer in my car to put the deer out of it’s misery. “No” came out of my lips before I had time to think about it. The deer was lying on its side barely breathing. The trucker wrapped it’s gigantic hand around one of its hind legs, dragged it to the side of the road, and left. The creature tried to get up but only managed to kneel in front of me, its tongue hanging out on side, blood slowly dripping out. Its suffering was hard to miss in her big black eyes.

I then had an epiphany. I did not want to eat it!!! I didn’t see a delicious deer steak waiting to be cooked, but a sentient being whose suffering I helped to cause. I felt it’s pain, and would have done anything to stop it. I didn’t have the strength to kill it. Killing was not my nature. I am NOT Grock.

It took a while before I became a vegetarian. The deer was just the last drop. The paradigm change happened as I slowly stopped seeing meat as delicious, healthy meals, but saw the death and suffering behind it instead. Other facts kept piling up to support my choice, once I became open. Environment, sustainability, health; a bunch of data I had known and read about, but previously refused to see. Years ago I accepted that cigarettes were bad for me, only after I saw my father die of cancer, not before. Eating meat was no different, except the planet is the one getting the cancer, not me. They say the only ones that enjoy change are babies. I certainly didn’t. Change is hard for me, like for anyone.

Animals have always been my friends, and I don’t eat my friends. Gandhi said that happiness is consistency between ones words, thoughts, and actions. I can’t pet my dog with one hand, and stick my fork in a pig with another, it’s hypocrisy at it’s purest. That is my choice, and I won’t impose it on anyone. But if the choices we make are missing information, are based on hidden facts and media manipulation, are they even choices?

I know I can be perfectly healthy on my Primal diet, but how about the world, can it?

Meat does need to be defended. It doesn’t have enough enemies and nor is it about to go extinct. Eating meat is fun, comes naturally and consumed correctly is healthy.

What we attempt to do when talking in it’s defence is to clear our collective conscience of what we know is wrong but pretend it is not. All the article says may be true. But there are some dark corners left unexplored. Animals need articles to defend them, for they have no human voice to do it themselves. But we know they feel pain, we know they suffer. As the most evolved Earthling, we should not exploit our planet to it’s limits, but protect it and all of its creatures.